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Today, on my way back from the grocery store, I got hit on by a six-year-old. I assume he was a six-year-old, because he was most certainly prepubescent and no bigger than a slightly overgrown wombat.

He pulled up to the corner of the sidewalk on his tiny child skateboard as I walked by. “Excuse me, miss!”

I stopped and removed my headphones, entirely expecting him to tell me he was lost or ask me where some tiny child theme park was located or if I liked the color green or some shit like that.

“I’m doing this thing for my skate park,” said the tiny male human as he smiled up at me with wide puppy eyes, “where I have to land a trick in order to get a hug.”

Uh.

Uuuuuuh.

Well that’s a weird promotion. Why would they have a kid do that? What kind of training approach are they OH MY GOD THIS INFANT IS HITTING ON ME.

“I… think you should ask your parents for that hug,” I said, once my brain stopped reeling from the shock of being flirted with by someone who probably doesn’t even know if he can grow a mustache yet.

“I did that already!”

“Yeah, well, practice makes perfect.”

At this point, I started to walk away, and this tiny manchild actually began yelling after me, shouting “Aw, come on! Come on!”

I, being an adult and not the size of a wombat, was able to outpace the indignant little human fairly easily and made it home without a small yapping thing at my heels.

Now, let’s talk about this.

The story is amusing. You have a child acting like an adult, and that is often funny, in the same way that pugs wearing sweaters and boots are funny. It’s one thing pretending to be something it’s not. It’s a behavior farce. Lol. Ha ha. Whatever.

But this story is also absolutely fucking horrifying. It’s only funny because I was dealing with a small child incapable of overpowering me or presenting any real threat. But fast-forward ten years. That wombat-sized kid is now a sixteen year old boy who’s probably at least as tall as I am. Move ahead another ten years, and now a fully grown man is the one getting angry that I turned him down and is shouting “aw, come on!” at me while I’m just trying to carry my bags home from the grocery store. Now it’s an adult who’s throwing a tantrum because his line didn’t work and he didn’t get what he wanted. Now it’s someone who’s much more of a match for me physically coming at me with a lifetime of assumption that if he asks for it, I, a complete stranger, should give it to him.

That right there is rape culture. Inside of a six-year-old.

Not so funny now.

Comedy becomes tragedy all too easily. For that story ten and twenty years from now to be different, its revision needs to start now.

What’s this, you appear to have thought to yourself, the first female fighter pilot of the UAB stood up against FOX’s sworn enemy, ISIS? Well, I could comment on her bravery… or how many social prejudices she’s overcome… or how she’s such an ally for US interests… Wait, I know! Better comment on her boobs!

Or make a low-brow, uninspired joke about female driving stereotypes that would paint Major Mansouri as less capable than a male counterpart, as Mr. Gutfeld seemed to think best.

Because sexist “jokes” are totally what all your viewers were itching to hear just then, right?

Wrong.

I’d like to introduce the two of you to a little something called the HeForShe campaign, a “solidarity movement for gender equality,” as the website says.

Oh, sorry, I used some large words that you two don’t seem to be familiar with, based on your performance yesterday. Let me break it down for you.

Solidarity means that hey, feminism isn’t just for or about females. The state of women – roughly one half of the human population – is something that affects and is affected by the other half, all you male-identifying folk. So hey, how about we stand together through all this stuff instead of making half the human race grind its teeth because of your stupidity?

Movement – so, we’re not just standing. Men have had to fight for their rights – like oh, say, freedom (ring a bell?) – and have come a long way. Women, we’ve been fighting too. But, as evidenced by men of your caliber, we’ve still got a long way to go to reach equal respect, freedom, and opportunity. Major Mansouri fought against an entire culture of disapproval for her opportunities. And now that she’s taken back her own personal freedom, she’s fighting for other women – and men – from the cockpit. That’s right, men. A vulva in the cockpit. Turns out genitalia doesn’t determine whether you can fight, metaphorically and very, very literally, for something you believe in.

Gender equality is what it sounds like – not women nagging men, not men belittling women. But rather, each of us evaluating the other based on individual merit, not our degree of mammary tissue or what kind of urethral exit we’ve got going. To demonstrate this concept, I’d say a fair evaluation of what Major Mansouri has done could be called “courageous, competent, and inspiring.” As for your Wednesday behavior, I’d put it at “unintelligent, unduly crass, and ignorant.”

I’m not the only one who thinks so. This is not some “feminazi” rant over a trivial matter. I am not some hormone-crazed female who “can’t take a joke.” No, I am justified in my outrage at your blatant and blind perpetuation not just of sexism, but of rape culture too. Your behavior treats a woman as if her body is fair game. As if the very fact that she is female makes her an acceptable target for jokes, for disparagement, for verbal undressing, for whatever your male mind may damn well please, really. But if Major Mansouri had been a man, would you have made comments about his bombing aligning it with his ball sack? Or his dick? I mean, you would have had a ready “joystick” joke right there. Would you have demeaned his skills as a soldier by saying that oh hey, he must not clean up as well on the bombing field because everyone knows that women do the household chores? Would you immediately jump to verbally jostling his sexual parts as a “joke,” instead of properly saluting this soldier who is fighting as an ally on your side for an entire fucking people’s freedom? No?

Then I think, sirs, that you have a problem.

You have several solutions before you. Heforshe.org has several to recommend. Personally, I’d advise issuing an apology. And no, not some flimsy sham of a guilt admission. I – and I suspect other men and women too – want remorse. We want acknowledgment of your ignorance and ill intention when you made those comments. We want recognition of your underlying prejudices. And we demand concrete measures for change.

Because if that does not happen – well then gentleman, if you will not remove your foot from your mouth, then perhaps it is time to get your dick out of the seat. Fox News obviously needs more female anchors anyway.

Sincerely,
Miceala Shocklee

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Let Eric Bolling, Gerg Gutfeld, and the rest of Fox News know that sexist comments like these are not only distasteful, but dangerous. Tweet this page’s url to the anchors and their channel, or leave a message for them on Facebook. Feel free to copy and past the letter above and add your own signature, or write your own message.

sample message:
Thank you, Ms. Guilfoyle, for deciding to highlight such a courageous female in our day and age as Major Mansouri. I support you in how you wanted to spin the story, and I condemn the comments that Mr. Bolling and Mr. Gutfeld made. Thank you for immediately calling them out on it and letting them know that their behavior was unacceptable. I thank you for your efforts and hope that you will keep standing up for women everywhere, beginning with yourself.

As someone who attended a private all-girls school from the age of 3, I received a fair amount of self-protection spiels. From the awkward “it’s not okay for anyone to touch your private parts” mumbles I received in elementary school to the assembly of junior high where a police woman came to talk to us about reducing our risk factors as potential targets to the high school prom night safety and it’ll-ruin-your-life-to-get-pregnant talks, I was doused in awareness from the very beginning that there were people out there who, if I wasn’t careful, would try to take advantage of my sexuality.

Sure, threat prevention awareness is a good thing to learn. But notice how it was presented to me as an “if I weren’t careful” scenario? Notice how I was taught about “reducing my target risk-factors?” While I was never explicitly told that it would be my fault if I were raped – in fact, I was usually vocally told the opposite – that message was still insinuated by the very approach the rape education programs took.

And oh hey, just a side note – nobody ever taught me what to do if I were raped. Police calls, hospital rape kits, legal paths, therapy – I only found out about those things through watching Law & Order SVU. In college.

But most of that, I suppose, is irrelevant to the main thing I’d like to tell you, oh vaginaless boys’ schools. You see, what I’d really like to say is that while all those rape talks about making sure we were safe might have done some good for me and my fellow females, it would have done even more good to have made sure there weren’t any rapists to begin with.

And that’s where you come in.

If anything, the rape rate would go down more drastically if boys were taught how to not rape. Girls don’t get to choose whether or not they’re victims. Boys always get to choose whether or not they’re rapists.

But surely, your sweet young upperclass boys who have been hand-fed good, moral values from the age of five would never do something so terrible?

Well. That has not been my experience.

I had friends who had been raped by the time we even got to be seniors in high school. It wasn’t by some thug from the bad part of town. It was by one of those nice, privileged boys that their friend had just gone to the winter dance with. The straight-A student, the drama club regular, the average joe on their crew time they’d hung out with on Friday nights. You know, the one nobody could ever envision as a rapist.

I mean, the sense of entitlement that would require!

Surely this son of a lawyer who drives his shiny car to school and has a tight group of male friends to back him up no matter what he needs would never have such a sense of entitlement. Sure this good Catholic boy who was taught that a vagina is a prize to be won by wedding vows would never be tempted to think he deserves the goody bag early!

Oh. Wait…

Hopefully by now you’re seeing my point. Those innocent young boys in your private prep school, they’ve been set up by their socioeconomic status to maybe become not so innocent. And even if those traits don’t quite take hold in adolescence, your boys are the ones who go on to become the frat guys you read about in the news who got to college and decided that finally, sex was theirs for the taking. Or if they make it beyond that, they are the ones who form into utterly distinguished businessmen with prim-and-proper wives and a white picket fence and a routine predictable as clockwork and 7 am traffic, and who when they become bored with their utterly distinguished, utterly regimented lives find themselves relieving that boredom in their niece’s bedroom…

No, these are not figments of a perverted imagination. They are real stories. Of my friends.

So. Now that we’re all properly horrified here, what do we do about it?

Well, let’s go back to those rape prevention talks I mentioned earlier. How about we have them again, except at your school this time? How about we make rape prevention as important a curriculum component at boys’ schools as at girls’? And while we’re at it, why not incorporate it into a recharged version of sex ed? One that could be used to teach both boys and girls, at private and public schools, from a practical perspective? Because honestly, telling us that hey, here’s your reproductive system, and it will do these things is about as helpful for managing daily sexuality as telling a pilot-to-be that hey, here’s a diagram of a plane, it can fly. Great. Now the pilot knows the plane can fly. Probably has no idea beyond that what the fuck to do with it.

Why not go beyond the mere “here’s a uterus and a vagina, here’s a penis and testicles” to actually tell budding pubescents, “and here are some feelings that you’re probably going to have with respect to your particular genitals, and here’s how to handle them.” Instead of just telling kids that it’s not okay to have sex before marriage, why not focus more on telling them that it’s not okay to abuse another’s body? Teach about abstinence in religion class. Teach about consent in sex-ed.

Seriously, there are so many ways to tackle teaching boys about rape prevention. And they’ve been shown to work. Take, for example, the “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign in Vancouver that led to a 10% decrease in the rape rate. Or the course designed by Foubert, Tatum, and Godin that told men, among other things, about other males that had been victimized – and that even led participants to report two years later that they had retained perspective and behavioral changes as a result of the course?

For decades, girls’ schools have been trying to keep down the rape rate from their side. Honestly, hasn’t done a whole lot of good.